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When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.
Chinua Achebe
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Chinua Achebe
Age: 82 †
Born: 1930
Born: November 16
Died: 2013
Died: March 22
Essayist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Philosopher
Poet
Short Story Writer
University Teacher
Writer
Albert Chinualumogu Achebe
Men
Burns
Library
Ground
Dies
More quotes by Chinua Achebe
There must be areas in which a particular character does not represent you.
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A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.
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Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
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When we hear a house has fallen do we ask if the ceiling fell with it?
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...when we are comfortable and inattentive, we run the risk of committing grave injustices absentmindedly.
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I couldn't tell you why but now I know a story is in fact where you discover who you are, where a culture discovers what it is and I just think that this is a terribly important place to get into and that I would enjoy it.
Chinua Achebe
My weapon is literature
Chinua Achebe
People go to Africa and confirm what they already have in their heads and so they fail to see what is there in front of them.
Chinua Achebe
Art is man's constant effort to create for himself a different order of reality from that which is given to him.
Chinua Achebe
When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate
Chinua Achebe
A chief does not hurry.
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Living fire begets cold, impotent ash.
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I'm amazed when I think about students today. They know from day one what they are going to be. We didn't. We just coasted. We just knew that things would work out.
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There was a saying in Umuofia that as a man danced so the drums were beaten for him.
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If you ask me, Now, is it your best book? I would say, I don't really know. I wouldn't even want to say. And I'd even go on and say, I don't even think so.
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Whenever I try to do anything on a typewriter, it's like having this machine between me and the words what comes out is not quite what would come out if I were scribbling.
Chinua Achebe
I prefer to go on trying all kinds of things, not to be told, This is the way it is done.
Chinua Achebe
I feel that the English language will be able to carry the weight of my African experience. But it will have to be a new English, still in full communion with its ancestral home but altered to suit new African surroundings.
Chinua Achebe
A kinsman in trouble had to be saved, not blamed anger against a brother was felt in the flesh, not in the bone.
Chinua Achebe
My position is that serious and good art has always existed to help, to serve, humanity. Not to indict. I don’t see how art can be called art if its purpose is to frustrate humanity. To make humanity uncomfortable, yes. But intrinsically to be against humanity, that I don’t take.
Chinua Achebe
